11/11/2009 @ 6:00PM

Moneypuck

The San Jose Sharks have yet to hoist the Stanley Cup, but when it comes to building teams that deliver bang for the buck, they’re the closest thing the National Hockey League has to a dynasty.

By the metric of player costs to wins, in the four seasons since the NHL introduced a salary cap, the Sharks are the only team to finish each season in the top eight among the league’s 30 teams. The Sharks rank third overall in the salary cap era, behind Detroit and Pittsburgh (the last two Stanley Cup winners top our list because playoff success counts more in our scoring than regular season victories).

The architect: General Manager Doug Wilson, who finds bargain players using proprietary statistical measures that revolve around where on the ice, and when during the game, key plays are made, not just how often they occur. Under Wilson’s scoring, a game-winning goal counts more favorably than a goal when the outcome of the game has already been decided.

Wilson, who played on the Sharks’ inaugural team in 1991, has a managerial approach that’s more in line with an M.B.A. grad than a retired player. He’s open to new ideas–often comparing notes with executives from other sports leagues and Silicon Valley firms–and contributes to weekly strategy sessions for the bevy of properties controlled by the Sharks’ owners beyond the hockey team.

The groundwork for Wilson’s front-office career was laid early in his playing days as a defenseman for the Blackhawks in the 1980s, when he took side jobs for the Chicago Bottling Co. that ranged from working on trucks to managing sales accounts. The company’s president, Bill O’Rourke, mentored Wilson as well as a handful of other area athletes, including John Paxson (now the Bulls’ GM), Jay Hilgenberg (now a Bears broadcaster) and the late Keith Magnuson (who rose through the ranks at Coca-Cola after retiring from hockey). O’Rourke’s biggest lessons: search for creative solutions and have trust in your team.

Those are Wilson’s hallmarks today. Instead of drafting prospects based solely on their points, plus-minus ratings and other traditional measures, Wilson relies on his 14-person scouting team, led by Tim Burke and Joe Will, to crunch new types of numbers to evaluate players.

Example: how does a particular right-handed shooter fare against left-handed goalies in late-game situations from the hash mark to the right of the net? They’ve also developed metrics to judge prospects differently based on whether they’re playing in college, the junior pros or Europe, and give NHL players’ statistics different weighting based on their years of experience in the league.

Progressive thinking like that is music to the ears of Kevin Compton, the Sharks’ co-owner and self-described “sports stats geek” who once invested in a fantasy sports company that had Oakland A’s general manager and stats guru Billy Beane on its board of directors.

The Sharks, through Wilson, have sought council from the likes of the late Bill Walsh, a two-time NFL coach of the year, and Los Angeles Dodgers GM Ned Colletti. Although Wilson cautions against drawing direct statistical comparisons across sports, he says the conversations are valuable in learning the managerial philosophies behind building successful teams and businesses.

A new collective bargaining agreement signed following the lockout that ruined the 2004-’05 season introduced the salary cap and vaulted pay for performance to the top issue among general managers across the league. The new agreement also reduced the age of unrestricted free agency from 31 to as young as 25 and ushered in new rules that generally benefited smaller and quicker players.

That’s when Wilson, who was promoted to GM two years earlier, says his focus on establishing new analytic scouting tools reached a critical mass. Not all GMs could adapt to the new NHL: Hall of Famer Bobby Clarke signed two 6-foot-5 defensemen for the Philadelphia Flyers with dismal results and eventually resigned eight games into the 2006-’07 season after 22 years of running hockey teams.

The Sharks, meanwhile, have traded for the likes of Joe Thornton (who won the Hart Memorial Trophy as the league’s MVP and the Art Ross Trophy for being the NHL’s top scorer as a Shark) and All-Star Dany Heatley and developed homegrown talent like forwards Devin Setoguchi and Joe Pavelski, all of whom scored at least 25 goals last season.

Prior to the 2008-’09 season, Wilson traded for veteran defenseman Dan Boyle, thought by many to be overpaid when Tampa Bay signed him to a six-year, $40 million deal right before the trade deadline. But Wilson loved Boyle’s ability to score from the back line at big moments (292 points, including 34 power play goals, in 523 games at the time).

Last season, Boyle made the All-Star team. Boyle and Thornton were big reasons the Sharks won the President’s Trophy for the best record in the league last year. The Sharks were upset in the first round of the playoffs by the Anaheim Ducks, but are again considered a contender for the Cup this season.

In a game earlier this season, San Jose allowed two goals by the New York Rangers in the first eight-and-a-half minutes of play. Over the next period and a half, the Sharks scored six unanswered goals en route to a 7-3 victory. “That’s what happens when they play their game,” Wilson said.